In the field of medical imaging, it is common to display a sequence of medical images from a patient. For example, Computed Tomography (CT) may provide a three-dimensional reconstruction of a human structure or tissue. For allowing a radiologist to navigate through the three-dimensional reconstruction, the three-dimensional reconstruction may be displayed as a sequence of two-dimensional cross-sections of the three-dimensional reconstruction, and the radiologist may be enabled to navigate through the sequence.
A particular image from the sequence of medical images may comprise a region that is of particular interest to the radiologist or other user. For example, Digital Breast Tomosynthesis (DBT) may provide a three-dimensional reconstruction of a patient's breast, and one of the cross-sections of the three-dimensional reconstruction may show a cluster of micro-calcifications which may be indicative of a precancerous condition of the patient.
It is known to alert a user to a region of interest within a sequence of medical images from a patient. For example, US 2010/0086188 describes a system for facilitating the presentation of selected features in a set of reconstructed and/or projection breast images to a health professional. The features may be potential calcifications that meet certain criteria. The location of the features is obtained by a separate Computer-Aided Detection (CAD) step. Facilitating the presentation may comprise displaying selected breast images that comprise potential calcifications, and highlighting the calcifications in the images. Alternatively, potential calcifications may be outlined by a box, indicated by an arrow, or highlighted by a color and/or intensity change in the image in the vicinity of the potential calcifications.
A problem of the facilitated presentation of the region of interest according to US 2010/0086188 is that it is insufficiently suitable for alerting a user to a region of interest within one image of a sequence of medical images from a patient.